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Xubuntu and BOINC...DEDICATED DC CRUNCHERS Page 2 of 8 RETURN TO DIRECTORY BACK | NEXT 
The next step is to obtain the .iso image file to burn an installation CD. Like other versions of Ubuntu, the Xubuntu distribution uses a LiveCD (a bootable CD that allows you to run the OS from the CD without installing it) and it is available in an alternate installation version for machines that don't want to install the OS with the LiveCD, require dual-boot configurations or have low system resources. For the purposes of this HOWTO, we're going to be using the standard, 64-bit, Desktop PC version. You will have to adjust your installation to accomodate the version you want to use, if different than this one.
The current version of Xubuntu is 8.04 (stable, long term support release) and the .iso file can be downloaded from the Xubuntu mirror sites here: The file we're using is xubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso and is the version used for both AMD and Intel 64-bit processors.
The .iso image file will be over 500 megabytes in size, and will take awhile to download. Once you've got it, you'll need to burn an installation CD with it. Now, we're going to tell you up front that lots of burning software either can't burn .iso images or do a crappy job of it, making more beer coasters than useable discs. Before you blame the CD burner, the cheap CD-R discs or Murphy's Law for this, you'll want to download something else. If you're burning .iso discs on a Windows machine, you need a great little utility called BurnCDCC that only does one thing: it burns CD and DVD .iso images to CD-R and DVD-R media better than anything we've ever used on the Windows platform. You can download this nifty product (it's free) here: Once you've burned your installion CD, you'll need to hook up a CD-ROM drive to your cruncher if it doesn't have one, and set the BIOS to boot from this drive first. Insert the CD into the drive and restart the machine. The Linux kernel on the disc will load, and you'll be given some options. Choose the INSTALL XUBUNTU option and wait for the partitioning tool options to come up on the screen. At this point, we're going to assume that your machine is a dedicated cruncher, that you do not frighten easily and that you can live without Windows. Choose the MANUAL partitioning option. Try not to be scared, the Microsoft Police will not break down your door and confiscate all of your porn and operating system discs. The roof will not collapse and the dog will not pack his food bowl and doggy treats and move across town. All will be well in the universe, young Grasshopper... balance, harmony and the penguin are with you. We are going to partition the hard drive in a manner that is simple and efficient for a dedicated DC/BOINC cruncher, using some numbers and techniques which we have arrived at through alot of experimentation and experience screwing things up until we get it right. We partition workstations and servers differently, mounting more directories to their own partition than we do with a dedicated cruncher. We've found the following scheme is what works best for us for this purpose, and have found no advantages to other schemes we've tried with this distribution. We're going to use the ext3 filesystem on all of the partitions except the /swap partition, so be sure to select this filesystem each time you make a partition! Although we have used ReiserFS on some of the crunchers, we've found we prefer ext3 on the crunchers, now. A lengthy discussion of filesystems and our reasons for choosing them is beyond the scope of this HOWTO. A dedicated DC cruncher doesn't need much HDD space, so we use drives from 4 GB to about 20 GB, with 8.4 and 10 GB drives being what most of them have in them. We'll give the partition sizes we use for a 10 GB drive, and then offer some suggestions for other sizes. We have quite a number of drives this size laying around, pulled out of older machines, given to us by friends and relatives who know we can use them, or bought off of ebay for cheap. Partition the drive: The size of the 6th partition, the /home directory, represents the free space left over after the other four partitions are made, and will be around one gigabyte on a 10 GB drive. Anything in the 500 to 1500 megabyte range is fine. A drive is fastest at the beginning, and slowest at the end, although this isn't nearly as noticeable with modern, multiplatter drives as it used to be. However, we're using some not-so-modern drives. We want our /boot kernel in a small partition at the beginning of the drive for quick bootups, and safety from being overwritten by an application gone crazy. We want our /swap space next, as a BOINC cruncher will often use it. People have some funny ideas about how much swap space to allocate, and we've seen quite a few arguments and goofy formulas based on amount of RAM installed. Funny thing is, I've never seen any of these folks mention how much swap space their machines were actually using, based on what the machine is used for and a long term eye on actual usage. Regardless of how much RAM you have installed, one gigabyte will work just fine on your dedicated cruncher. It's plenty enough that you won't need more, and cutting it back any smaller isn't going to make sense unless you're using a drive under six gigabytes. Unless you have less than 256 MB of memory, which I can't imagine why you would on a machine that's even capable of crunching, the figure we give here will work fine. Next, we want the /tmp directory, which is used by many programs for data that won't be kept around for long. Having it in its own partition prevents errant programs or malicious code from filling up the entire disk and stopping the operating system. The size we give here is larger than we've ever seen a Linux machine actually need, but even on an 8 GB drive we have plenty of room. Drive speed is going to mean diddly squat for the rest of our directories, for all practical purposes, on a dedicated cruncher. Four gigabytes for the root partition ( / ) is plenty. You can cut this back for smaller drives, but allow at least 2.5 GB to be safe. For larger drives, you might want to bump it up to six or seven gigs if you want to install a number of other packages to play around with. Our /var directory is for variable data... data that changes often. Much of BOINC file operations take place here, as well as most other applications. We don't want to fragment the other filesystems with this activity, and since the data changes frequently, what fragmentation that does occur in this directory isn't going to affect performance enough to even measure. In a worse case scenario, this directory could fill up completely, and could bring the operating system to a grinding halt if it wasn't mounted to its own partition. We've found 2.5 GB to be a reasonable minimum size for this partition, and for larger drives you might want to increase this one to the 3.5 to 5.5 GB range. As mentioned, the /home directory's partition can be anything from 500 MB to 1.5 GB for a dedicated cruncher, and you won't have any problems. It's always a good idea to have this directory mounted to its own partition on any UNIX variant, especially if the machine has more than one user. If somebody installs that imaVIRUSyoudipshit.worm package into their home directory, the impact will be minimal to the system. DEDICATED DC CRUNCHERS Page 2 of 8 RETURN TO DIRECTORY BACK | NEXT
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